What do you know about lions? While you may have seen videos of these iconic big cats wandering the plains of Africa, there’s a lot to learn about the world’s second biggest cat.
Panthera works with partners across Africa to protect this species, which is listed as Vulnerable on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. To safeguard lion populations, education is key. Below is a list of ten crucial lion facts that you may not be aware of:
It’s a shocking statistic: there are fewer than 24,000 lions remaining today. Due to a 90% reduction in their historic range, habitat fragmentation, prey loss, human-cat conflict and sometimes poaching, the modern lion population is a mere fraction of an estimated 90,000 in the year 1970. African lions cling to survival in a variety of protected areas across the continent, while Asiatic lions have been extirpated from all but one country in their former range.
India is the sole country inhabited by Asiatic lions. Once ranging across South Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East, these lions are now limited to the protected Gir Forest in the western Indian state of Gujarat. Only several hundred of this once-wide-ranging lion population remain.
There are many physical and genetic trait differences between West African lions (a subpopulation of the subspecies panthera leo leo present in West Africa, northern Central Africa and India) and the lions of East and Southern Africa. In addition to a thinner, smaller body, male West African lions also usually possess shorter manes than their counterparts on the other part of the continent. This may have something to do with competition: larger manes attract more females, and there are simply fewer males to compete with for mates amongst the smaller lion populations of West Africa.
While most associate lions with Africa, lions used to inhabit Europe. Evidence indicates that this species once roamed in Bulgaria and Greece. Lions can even be found in local mythology and the iconography of ancient architecture and art.
Sometimes, lions hunt dangerous prey like elephants and even crocodiles! While Nile crocodiles are formidable carnivores able to take down a full-grown lion, lions may hunt this species if the opportunity arises. In fact, crocodile predation is oddly very common amongst the lions in and around Zimbabwe’s Matusadona National Park.
While male lions are often depicted as having sole access to a pride of females, the story is more nuanced. Bachelor male lions will often form coalitions that help them hunt and protect them from other male lions in nearby territories. Often, these males will join together to challenge other male lions for a pride of females. It’s common to see prides consisting of two or even three males in some of the more densely populated parts of the species’ range.
While tigers and lions are the two biggest wild cats and used to have overlapping territories in Asia, they are less closely related than one might think. The common ancestor of tigers and snow leopards diverged from the ancestors of lions, jaguars and leopards between 3 and 4 million years ago. This means that lions are more closely related to leopards and even jaguars (which did not even live on the same landmass) than they are to tigers.
Human-cat conflict over livestock is a major threat to lions. Sometimes, humans retaliate after their livestock, whether a goat, sheep or cow, is hunted by a big cat. Panthera and partners in Zambia mitigate this threat by building livestock bomas, enclosures that are meant to keep domestic animals safe. And these bomas are doing their jobs — thus far, no lion or livestock deaths have been reported across all places where Panthera has aided in the construction of these bomas.
In 2015, Panthera researchers and Gabon’s ANPN found evidence of a single male lion living in Gabon, where lions had been thought to be regionally extirpated. By collecting DNA samples, researchers deduced that this lion was most genetically similar to the lions that currently inhabit southwestern Africa. Therefore, they recommended that any future reintroduction projects should use lions with origins in Namibia and Botswana.
Panthera began working with Senegal’s Department of National Parks in the country’s Niokolo-Koba National Park in 2017, where only 15 West African lions remained, one of the last of its kind in West Africa. Through our conservation efforts, we’ve helped increase this population to around 30 individuals, doubling the number of lions that existed when we began our partnership.
Want to learn even more about lions? Make sure to visit their species page and read our collection of blogs about lions here. To test yourself on more lion facts, take our quiz “Cat Fact or Cat Fiction: Lions”. Together, we can turn the tide for one of the most iconic animals on Earth.
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© Sebastian Kennerknecht
